The world is watching a frightening reality show, as both the US and Israel threaten to mutually freak out, and, in the process, destroy much of what passes for civilization. They work in tandem to strangle Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, calling their murderous assaults democracy. This, while they feverishly depict Iran as the mirror of themselves: a menace to the human race.

Though the power of the Israeli lobby in the U.S. can make it seem that both nations are one, there is a separation when it comes to paying the price for their common supremacist madness. While neither of these twins of global terror really benefit from their perverse relationship, one does absorb a far greater cost. Part of that is money, and part is the loss of life in the invasion of foreign nations, and the experience of 911. The expense will become even greater in the near future, and could cause depression which would not simply be in the individually profitable mental area, but in the far more costly physical, social realm.

While the biblically inspired shapers of American foreign policy rapturously wait for Cuba to fail, Iraq to succeed, Israel to rule and the messiah to appear, the nation sinks more deeply into financial and political despair. This is hardly a positive situation for the inmates of our national institution, but global reaction may offer hope that all is not lost.

What passes for the official international community is under the control of a minority dominated U.N., but a growing voice of the global majority is becoming louder and more powerful. Whether its democratic tendency will overcome angry reactionary violence is a question for the future, but continued Western domination will assure the most bloody outcome for the planet and its people.

All economic indicators clearly show the wealthy and their servant class reaping enormous benefits from present reality, with the global majority absorbing the massive costs. Here in the USA, the gap between the top 25 percent and the bottom 75 percent has been expanding for years, but has hardly been noticed as the former working class -- now re-branded the middle class -- consumes massive amounts of often useless products. It does this using borrowed and imaginary funds. Why should it be different, given that the nation, recently sinking to its eyeballs in a sea of liability, now barely shows its receding hairline in an ocean of debt?

The empire only survives with material military power to enforce its immaterial faith in the market god. But even that balance is changing, as recently shown in an upstart guerilla band fighting a mechanized military juggernaut to a standstill in Lebanon.

The emerging anti-imperial forces, labeled terrorist by the declining West, are communicating with masses of people and achieving authority the new fashioned way: democratically. Whether it is the organized and formerly powerless in Venezuela, Palestine, Lebanon, Bolivia or Mexico, the international nature of the movement is frightening enough to the ruling powers of empire to provoke their most irrational attacks on life, and reason.

The bloody assaults on Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon, to name only the most blatant, are all rationalized as defensive measures. These are taken against threats originating from evil sources that would create a strange new world of national equality among majorities, rather than maintaining that of international dominance by minorities.

In keeping with this deranged analysis from the nightmarish mentality of Western fundamentalism, the global anti-Semitism industry and its employees in national government have dubbed the elected leader in Iran a �new Hitler.� What, exactly, has Ahmadinejad done to deserve this overused and much abused label?

His hate mongering opposition murders foreigners with impunity, has military forces occupying other nations, and is armed with the most deadly weapons of mass destruction ever known to humanity. Meanwhile, he and his nation represent no threat to any but those in the West who choose the role of divine imperial dominators. Most of humanity sees the threat, clearly, while the Western leaders look through a lens blurred by myopic vision and with a terminally challenged capacity to reason.

Unfortunately, this deranged view is passed on to great numbers of Western citizens who rely for their world iew on the empire�s staff of stenographers, posing as objective reporters in the media.

Led by a president who would need to see a proctologist to have his head examined, the nation lurches towards a dangerous if not disastrous future. Is there any hope for positive change in the rulers of the USA? One brief glance at the frontrunners for the presidential slot in our quadrennial choice-free selection process doesn't offer much.

Change in the USA may come from capital�s largest holders, who show signs of growing panic at the machinations of a financial mall in which billions of dollars are immaterially exchanged in order to make believe there is material substance behind their electronic illusion. Forecasts of doom among many of the less fundamentalist priests and rabbis of the marketplace may bring more seemingly rational imperialists to power. But the problems will remain and get worse, until there is a real democratic upsurge from the people.

Right now, expecting that surge to come from the citizens of the USA seems a bit presumptuous, if not quite as irrational as our leadership. If it has to come from outside and work its way in, so be it. But we�d better hope, if not pray, that the world will show more care and concern for us than we have shown for the world.

Copyright � 2006 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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